originally, the dragons were announced to be playing at t on the sunday (13th) so we decided we could go to optimus alive in portugal (10th) and fly back to the uk on the 11th and make our way to glasgow to stay at marnie's for the weekend and actually have a day off to chill out. that isn't allowed though, we're not allowed to have a day off. their set got moved to the friday (11th) instead, but of course we'd already booked our flight. scheduled to land into manchester at 4pm on the friday and then get the train up to glasgow? that wasn't going to work anymore. so we had to find an alternative. did you know, there's only 3 direct flights from lisbon to edinburgh a week? well, you do now. and so do we. we looked up so many different flight combinations and routes, before eventually finding a suitable one over on lastminute.com - flying into london heathrow then connecting to the edinburgh flight, arriving at 2:15pm - plenty of time!
so friday rolls around, we catch maybe an hour of sleep in our hotel in portugal before we get up to check out and grab a taxi to the airport. we're there in plenty of time again, and suddenly delays. we were meant to have started boarding the plane when they announced that there would be more information shortly. they never announced any information, so we were all just kind of sat around not knowing what was going on. we found out it was a problem with the plane, i asked what would happen if we missed our connecting flight and was given nothing but a shrug in response. thanks for that, tap portugal staff. we just had to sit and play the waiting game, which sucked. eventually, about 40 minutes after we were meant to have been boarded already, they start boarding us - or so we thought. once we'd scanned our boarding cards we were lead down to one of those airport shuttle buses and driven halfway around the airport to a new plane. eventually we took off, around an hour later than scheduled. nobody could give us any information about what to do with missed connections, and there was a group of ladies on our flight who were catching a connection for canada! to make matters worse we were at the very back of the plane and once we landed at heathrow with 50 minutes until our next flight, we were told we can't exit from the rear doors, we have to go through the front. minutes were ticking by and every minute is precious when you've got a connecting flight to catch! finally free from the confines of the flying tin can, we ran through the airport. of course nothing could work in our favour, we had to make our way from terminal 2 to terminal 5 and to do that we had to catch another airport shuttle bus and let me tell you, it was the slowest bus i have ever been on in my life. and there was a very rude lady who didn't seem to understand our problem and was insisting that her passengers had priority even though they had two hours until their flight. we had 20 minutes.
finally arriving at terminal 5, we're told we won't make the flight as we have to go through security and boarding will be closed in the next couple of minutes. absolutely fantastic. to top it off, we're directed to the british airways customer service desk and told we might have to pay for our new flight since the tickets are technically separate and tap portugal should have arranged for us to be put on a new flight, which they hadn't. i ended up crying in front of the lady at the customer service desk and i don't know if that helped matters, but either way we were put on the next flight - the last two seats available! finally a stroke of good luck. this meant we'd only be landing less than hour later than originally scheduled in the first place. yay! we made our way to security, had to wait in line behind some of the slowest people i've ever encountered, and eventually we were through and made it to our gate with about 10 minutes before boarding. thank you, british airways! we departed perfectly on time, received complimentary drinks and snacks, and landed a few minutes early. success!
we got changed in the toilets and marnie's mum came to pick us up from the airport. it was a bit of a mission to find her but eventually we did and off we went! it was pretty smooth going until we hit the festival traffic which was crawling along for quite a while but we made it with no major complications, yay!
we got there halfway through haim's set and we didn't really make much of them to be honest. the crowd filtered out a little after they left the stage and we moved forward a few rows but we were still the furthest back we've ever been for an imagine dragons show, heh.
they had an exceptionally short set (about 45-40 minutes) but they did their cover of 500 miles and it was insane, the whole crowd was bouncing! somehow ryan managed to spot us in the crowd too - probably because we were jumping about 5 feet in the air. marnie gave me a piggyback during tiptoe (we tried getting me on her shoulders, it failed miserably. we're too weak...) which dan spotted! it was also their tour manager angie's birthday so they brought her out on stage which was cute.
we tried to leave during radioactive so we'd miss the crazy rush of people after they'd finished but we ended up just getting stuck at the back of the front section barrier and got beer thrown on us. yay festivals! we eventually made our way out and got a drink and some food before claiming a spot off to the side to see ellie goulding.
that woman is incredible on stage. it saddens me that i haven't seen her more often - the last time i saw her live was back in 2010/2011 when she was just starting out and she was a little more reserved. now she knows how to put on a proper show and get the crowd going and it was incredible. she has so much energy and she looks absolutely perfect! i want to be her. after ellie we got some drinks tokens and started on the wine and had a wander around the festival.
we adventured to and braved the toilets, found a phone charging place, ventured into some kind of rave going on at the bbc stage and went on the big wheel during ed sheeran. high vantage point!
after the big wheel it was time for biffy clyro. first off we decided that we were going to stay at the back, but the back was boring so we just kept making our way through the crowd and ended up at the barrier separating the two halves of the crowd. oops? i've never seen them live before but they were incredible!
we left just before the last song so marnie could get her phone back from the phone charging place because it shut at midnight, then ended up sitting and eating the best chinese food i've ever had. eventually we made our way out of the festival and went to look for the bus back to glasgow, but not without getting lost and having to fork out £25 each! we made friends whilst waiting for the bus (for like an hour) and after a bus ride that took almost three hours we got back to glasgow and caught a taxi back to marnie's and fell asleep almost instantly.
t in the park, you were brilliant. i have no doubt that we'll be seeing you again next year.
next up, hamburg!
love,
the wolfpack
xo
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